Banesh Hoffmann, Einstein's co-author, admits that, originally ("without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations"), the Michelson-Morley experiment was compatible with Newton's variable speed of light and incompatible with the constant speed of light posited by the ether theory and "borrowed" by Einstein in 1905:

"Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether." Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p.92 https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768

Albert Einstein: "I introduced the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light, which I borrowed from H. A. Lorentz's theory of the stationary luminiferous ether." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory

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Pentcho Valev

"Emission theory, also called Emitter theory or ballistic theory of light, was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity, explaining the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887. [...] The name most often associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his corpuscular theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object, and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory

That is, if the speed of light depends on the speed of the light source (c'=c±v), the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment will be null.

The crucial question:

If the speed of light does not depend on the speed of the light source (c'=c), will the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment be null, provided we are in 1887 and fudge factors (length contraction etc) are still not introduced?

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Pentcho Valev

Pentcho Valev wrote:

> Banesh Hoffmann, Einstein's co-author, admits that, originally ("without
> recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz
> transformations"),
> the Michelson-Morley experiment was compatible with Newton's variable
> speed of light and incompatible with the constant speed of light posited
> by the ether theory and "borrowed" by Einstein in 1905:

that's why nobody understood what he wrote that time. Contraction of space
and dilation of time was absurd that time, and still is. Still is since
they have no *macro_scale* mechanism explaining it. Completely different
logic and arithmetic in relativity and quantum scale.

I wonder they are so stupid trying to unify them. It's impossible by the
non_inherent construction and such as.